


Symbol No. 14: BIRD

by criacuervos



Series: pía's schrödinger hdm fix-it [2]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, The Secret Commonwealth? don't know her, dear mister pullman: fuck you strongly worded letter to follow, mentioned Tony/Lyra for the shippers like me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:34:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23126353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/criacuervos/pseuds/criacuervos
Summary: xiv. BIRDprimary, secondary & tertiary meaningsthe soul (dæmon), spring, marriageLyra and Pantalaimon catch their deteriorating relationship before it creates a gap, beginning their healing process after everything they went through travelling the multiverse — and especially the Land of the Dead.
Relationships: Lyra Belacqua & Pantalaimon
Series: pía's schrödinger hdm fix-it [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684564
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	Symbol No. 14: BIRD

**Author's Note:**

  * For [azure_is_bloo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/azure_is_bloo/gifts).



“Pan?” Lyra whispered. “Can we talk?”

Her dæmon only hesitated a second before saying, “Sure.”

They were sleeping with their backs to each other, which was unlike them, but it had been happening one night after the other as of late. It had started to bother Lyra, though what really worried her was that neither of them ever spoke about it. As if it wasn’t happening. They used to sleep curled up with one another, Pantalaimon around her neck or underneath her arm. Now, she didn’t even touch him, his fur didn’t brush her.

With a whisper from her hair on the pillow and the duvet around her, Lyra turned to face him. Her spot was that closest to the wall, it hadn’t really been _a thing_ when she and Pantalaimon slept like the same entity, it had only become apparent she preferred that nook when the spot next to the floor became Pan’s.

It was the summer break from boarding school and her books and such were haphazardly thrown around the cramped room. Everything multiplied with each passing year. More things to read, more classes to take, more cheat sheets to write. At sixteen, she was a breath away from graduation and St. Sophia’s College. The walls, other than the one by her bed, had also fallen victim to her post-it notes and doodles — all thirty-six symbols of the alethiometer had their own paper with an arguably perfected drawing and as many meanings as possible written down, and they were all pasted on the doors of her wardrobe. The old radio she got from an unsuspecting resident scholar, who had stupidly left his office door open, rested on the mantle of her cold fireplace now, instead of her desk. Lyra needed her desk for the increasing schoolwork she had to do and to display the trinkets she’d accumulated over the years as were four snow globes, a tin vase for every new array of flowers Tony gave her, a glass bottle filled with change, her three cans of pens and pencils, two framed photos — one big and one small — showing first Lyra with her St. Sophia’s friends and then Lyra with the Costa on Christmas. Shadows cast heavier from the lights outside the window with all of those things, made the room feel really dark.

Pantalaimon was curled up into a ball but raised his head when Lyra looked at him. She reached over for the lamp on her desk, that doubled as a bedside table, and switched it on.

When Lyra sat up, Pantalaimon uncurled completely and sat too.

“Oh, it’s serious,” he said.

Lyra wrung her fingers on her lap. Once upon a time, she didn’t have to think so long to speak with her dæmon. There was no _right_ or _bad_ way to say things, Lyra just had to say them.

Things had changed. When had they changed?

Pantalaimon didn’t push her. He just sat in his funny pine-marten way, long spine an arch, looking at her with his characteristic patience that had been lacking as of late. It was easier to get each other worked up with disagreements. A gentleness, tenderness, radiated off him that at least kept Lyra’s shoulders relaxed. It was as if the privacy and comfort of this room that had been theirs for sixteen years reverted them back to good old habits.

“Are you mad at me?” Lyra finally asked.

It was a bad sign when Pantalaimon didn’t immediately answer, didn’t immediately say _no, never._ Lyra’s silvertongue had to be balanced out with a dæmon who was truthful to a fault. Pantalaimon would never lie to spare her feelings, even if the both of them would still take care of each other above all else. (Those two things, Lyra, thought, weren't mutually exclusive).

“I’m not—” Pantalaimon swished his tail with the same tick Lyra might have drummed her fingernails. “— I’m not mad. I don’t know _what_ I am.”

“But you aren’t happy?”

Hesitation again, he was quicker to respond this time. Pantalaimon shook his head.

“Was it— Was it something I did?”

Silence. This time, it worked as an answer: _yes._

“Oh, Pan…”

A hiccup sprung up in Lyra’s chest. Tears appeared quickly in her eyes. Pantalaimon couldn’t cry as a pine-marten but his whole posture emulated Lyra: bowed head, lowered ears, tail pressed to his body. Lyra didn’t open her arms to invite him into them, that didn’t feel like the right course of action. It would come off as forced.

“Let’s talk about it,” Lyra said, wiping the tears with the cuff of her pyjamas. “Please.”

Pantalaimon kept staring down at the mattress.

When the moment stretched too long and Lyra’s chest began to feel tighter, not only with sadness but growing panic, she whispered: “Don’t leave me, Pan.”

Pantalaimon looked up. “I’m not going to leave you. Lyra—” He stretched the length of his body to touch her knee with his wet nose. “I would never leave you, it hurt us so much once already.”

Lyra wiped and wiped the tears but they wouldn’t stop coming. “That’s it, right? That’s why you’re mad. It’s because of the Land of the Dead. Oh, Pan. Why didn’t you tell me? I also haven’t stopped thinking about it, even after all these years.” Four years, to be exact. “I’m still so disgusted with myself for leaving you. I wished— I wish with all my heart that it could have been different. That I could have held you in my arms all the way to the other shore. That you could have seen Roger again. I shouldn’t have assumed you forgave me.”

“I did forgive you,” said Pantalaimon. “But that doesn’t mean…”

This time, Lyra let the silence rest without interruption. She tried to ease her sobs and take deep breaths, one hand coming down to pet her dæmon. Pantalaimon let her, welcoming the gesture and she almost cried another round of tears but these ones of relief. Against the windows blew a strong wind, the kind that howled in its force. One solitary bell sounded far, far away since not many were awake in the dark hours of the morning to ring church bells. Whichever bell that ones the ringer was dedicated. The lamplight bounced off the glass of the spare coins-bottle and the snow globes, reflecting too on the alethiometer that rested on top particular worksheets that Dame Hannah had assigned them to keep the reading skills sharp during the summer. Right on the stand of the lamp was a crude ring made of wire and from the shade hung a charms necklace decorated with: an apple, feathery wings, and a snowflake (at least thus far, Lyra was in the search for more charms). The last two were gifts from Tony. 

“The sight of you on that boat,” Pantalaimon finally spoke, voice pausing as if struggling to find the right words as Lyra had struggled. “Drifting away, far from me, it’s something I’ll never be able to forget. I knew that we loved Roger deeply, that we were decided to find him, but I kept thinking that you didn’t love me at all because you left me.”

“You know that’s not true. Pan, I love you more than anything in this world. Every atom of me.”

They had spoken of their travels in small bite-sized chunks, starting with the easiest parts. It was still hard to choose because even the easiest parts had their own significant weight, they were just lighter than others. Things like meeting Will or the wonder of Cittàgazze were now coloured by Will disappearing behind the window and Cittàgazze being the first thing she saw knowing Roger had just died for her mistake. Alice spoke about _silver linings_ and Ma Costa about _giving it time_ , it still hurt and it was only her and her dæmon who understood that hurt. It cut her breathing thinking that talking about the heavier things could create a crack they could never repair. Better to play it safe and speak only of those things they saw eye-to-eye to: _I miss them, we lost them, yeah, that happened._ They also saw eye-to-eye on clinging to normality and the strain came from there, from faking the bubbly tone of their voice and staying within the same four walls when they could not be and having a sweetheart relationship like other girls their age. Lyuba had started to notice something was amiss. Tony whispered to her as if their dæmons couldn't hear and Lyra had run it over and over in her mind for two days, it culminated now.

Lyra opened her arms this time and her dæmon climbed to them easily. With the same familiarity of the past sixteen years of their lives. They hugged each other, well, Lyra did most of the hugging because she had the build for it but Pantalaimon reciprocated by digging his claws on her pyjamas and pressing his head under her chin. It was a breathtaking squeeze kind of hug.

“At least I knew who I was when we were separated,” Pantalaimon said. “Kirjava wasn’t so lucky. She was so confused. She had never had a physical form before and I can’t remember if she was a ferret or a dog or a cat the first time I saw her.” He rested his head on Lyra’s shoulder. “I hope she and Will talked about it. If only I had more time to teach her how to... exist."

Letters had started to get written, no address, just the names of the recipients. Some were for the dead and others so Lyra could have all her thoughts handy when she found the way to cross to another world once again and she could catch up with Will. There were apologies and confessions, thoughts in retrospective and funny questions that crossed her mind. So much had happened outside of themselves that Lyra hadn't had the time to ask him about the little things. She wanted to know his favourite colour (and wrote first that hers was blue, then yellow, and now she was at purple). She wanted to know what music he liked. What impossible thing he had wanted to be as a kid when he grew up. Favourite animal (both she and Pan agreed on _bear_ ). Favourite constellation. Place he would most like to visit in the world (and to explain it in case it didn't exist in hers). Midsummer started to feel sporeous, that's why she wrote those letters, for something physical that put Will Parry outside of her memories. (Her drawings of him weren't that good and he probably didn't look like he did when they were thirteen anymore). _So much has happened, Will,_ Lyra would write at the bottom of the page. _So much I wish to tell you._

“Pan?”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t hate me, right?”

“Never.”

“Do you believe me? I love you. I love you so, so much. I think if I lost you again it would really kill me this time.”

Pantalaimon buried his face on Lyra’s neck. She held him tight to her chest.

“I believe you.”

Those words travelled as a warm feeling between them.

“I really hate myself for leaving you.”

“It doesn’t make me happier that you hate yourself. I want things to be like they were before we left Jordan with… with her.”

Asriel Belacqua and Marisa Coulter were two of those _heavier_ weights to lift. They were out of their life but without closure. Lyra had taken to writing when feelings burned too hot on her chest and there were so many things she wanted repercussion from, things Asriel and Marisa caused. For the death of Roger. For abandoning her because she didn't fit into their lives. For dragging her into this quarrel of proportions a lot bigger than her and then setting her right in the middle. _It's better to let go of that anger,_ Farder Coram would say in his letters. Lyra so wanted to.

“Can we agree to go back to who we were then?”

“Feels a little impossible.”

Lyra petted his fur. “Maybe, I guess. I wonder how things would have been if we had stayed.”

“I wonder that sometimes too.”

Had they not left, Roger would still be alive because they would have been there to protect him. Keep the gobblers (keep _her_ ) from taking him. Sure, they would have probably lived in the lie of being orphans and not met Iorek Byrnison or Lee or Serafina Pekkala. They would have most definitely never met Will and Kirjava or Mary. Billy would probably die in an old shack, hugging a frozen fish carcass. They would miss on a lot of things. They knew more than any human alive in the whole world, but at what cost?

“Lyra?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you, too. So, so much.”

A smile appeared on her face and her tears were of the happy kind.

**Author's Note:**

> Consider this a spiritual sequel to [THIS PEPPERMINT WINTER](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21838657) and set in the same storyline as an upcoming piece titled SUNSHOWER (which will address my take on The Fall).


End file.
